Past Forgetting: My Memory Lost and Found

By Jill Robinson

A love story, a mystery, and a memory guide, Past Forgetting shows a writer's determination to re-create her life.Jill Robinson, novelist and author of Bed/Time/Story, wakes from a coma to discover she's lost her memory and just about any sense of who she was.And is.

She likes the look of the man standing next to her bed, but doesn't recognize that he's her husband, Stuart. What matters is that she feels safe around him. As she searches the house for her children, she is reminded that her son and daughter are both grown with families of their own--how well did she ever know them? Can You make up for a past you don't really remember?

It is Stuart who begins to fill in the details for Jill, including the fact that she's a well-known writer, although when she meets with her doctors, they say she may never write again.

Against all odds, Jill Robinson retrieved her unique writing voice, and in this engaging memoir shows how she does it. She takes us with her on her exploration of'tlie connections between memory and creativity, celebrity and anonymity, and loss and discovery. From her first tentative steps outside her house on Wimpole Street to London's sleek West End. From a trip to Oxford to discuss memory with a professor to her amazing voyage to Los Angeles on an assignment for Vanity fair which takes her back to the sixties world of Hockney, Polanski, and Hopper, Jill forges new paths to memory.

In Past Forgetting, Jill Robinson rediscovers friendships she doesn't know she had: Robert Redford tells her stories about her childhood; at John Lahr's London literary teas, she's reintroduced to the writer's world, and Cary Grant offers her memories of her father, Dore Schary. And being with Barbra Streisand reminds her of a time she doesn't quite remember: when her father was running MGM.

In her urgent voyage to redefine herself, Jill asks all the questions you've ever asked on the nature of memory. Is recollection shadowed by emotion? Is memory an act of reinvention? Do people reinvent rather than recollect? In Past Forgetting you'll find the answers and you'll meet a writer you won't want to forget.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 21, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061971044

Jill Robinson

Jill Robinson has written nine books, including the bestsellers Perdido and her seminal memoir, Bed/Time/Story. She grew up in Hollywood, where her father ran MGM, and writes about issues of love and loss for Vogue, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times. Robinson runs the Wimpole Street Writers Group in London, where she lives with her husband, Stuart Shaw.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

It begins like this. I am awake. Sunlight comes through the window. A warm body sits next to me on the bed. A firm torso or arm, pressing close, male or female. Not sure. The sun frames the blond hair. Solid presence—stability.

Crisp, heavy sheets. This is a hospital somewhere. And I’m in it.

Looking hard against the sun, I can see the face. So, you’re captivating, I say, and who are you?

I’m your husband, he says. I’m Stuart.

That’s a beginning, I laugh, and who am I? I’d like to ask, And where are we, but that’s too much to know just now.

You’re Jill. You’re a writer.

He’s scared, I can hear that. But at the same time he’s able to be reassuring. You’re going to be just fine.

I can tell he’s lying. I didn’t ask.

He takes my hand. But you will. Do you remember climbing out of the pool?

Yes, I say. Can he tell when I’m lying?

I remember swimming. I am stretching every muscle to match the drive of the woman leading aerobics before this—collar blade outlined in sweat, thigh bones shadowed like the ridge under Ava Gardner’s brows. Am I in Palm Springs? Twenty laps. I’ve got nineteen. You’re there, I urge myself on, just one more.

Now I’m here in this hospital. So, did I hit my head? I don’t wait for an answer. How long have I been out?

A while, he says.

I lean against his arm.

It is night. Someone brawny is sitting beside me. Hello…—male voice—now have some soup. He tries to feed me. I can’t taste the name of it. You could have drowned, he’s telling me, but you got out of the pool somehow.

I touch his forearm lightly. This is very patient, nice of you to sit here with me.

I’m your husband.

I know—but I don’t know. Tears. If you know what I mean.

Here’s the next banner of time I catch hold of. A man in white comes in. He puts up the shade. Behind him the world is flat, plain, and soft green, like a land in an old-fashioned children’s book. I’ve never been out of America. Our family doesn’t fly. Not since Carole Lombard was killed in the plane crash.

It’s sweet outside, I say.

Are you asking where you are?

Probably.

He’s great looking. Blond, built like Spencer Tracy, he’ll charm my father. Are you my doctor? I look him up and down.

He sits down next to me on the bed and puts his hand over mine. I’m your husband, Jill. You’re at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital near Tring.

Mandeville. That’s familiar, I think.

In England, he says.

You know, I thought England looked like this. I don’t want to ask how I got here. Not yet. My head’s splitting. The kids—is there a phone I can use? I have to call my kids. I look him over. I can’t make any connection here between him and my kids, Jeremy and Johanna. Who’s with them?

Jill. He’s trying to get me to pay attention, to see how long I can hold onto what he tells me. You’ve been in a coma and you’ve forgotten things. It’s only temporary. He hopes. Jeremy and Johanna are grown.

I’ve been out so long? I try to sit up.

It will all come back. He’s trying to reassure both of us. He sounds English. My life is over and I’ve come back in an old war movie.

There’s a piece missing, I explain. I touch his hand and I’m gone again.

I’m leaning against a man’s chest. I’m seriously unhappy. You’ll remember soon.

Anger is the last thing I remembered before the seizure, which put me into the coma, shattered my ability to remember and erased years of recollection.

My husband and I had come to a spa outside London, where we live. We made a pact to get fit, he reminds me now.

You didn’t want to rush dressing to go in for breakfast. You were trying on outfits. So I went back to bed to read until you decided you were ready. Then you discovered I’d brought chocolate with me to the spa. You put on your bathing suit, said, ‘Forget breakfast, I’m going swimming.’

So I was the one who was angry.

Yes.

Is his voice appealing because it’s familiar, or because the tone, the rhythm, appeals to my taste? Do I remember my taste? What if I’ve forgotten how I dress? It’s okay. He won’t mind. Maybe.

We’re searching each other’s faces. He’s trying to see if I don’t remember. I’m trying to show I do. So we’d been away a while.

Only a couple of days, he says.

It just feels like forever, I say.

You’re playing it well. He strokes my hand.

I rub my eyes to blank out tears.

After you went off to swim, he says, I got up and went in for my circuit training. I was on my way when they called me.

Have you told me what happened each time you’ve visited?

Yes, he says, more or less.

What about telling me more.

A maid discovered you in a seizure at ten. You’d made it to our room, he’s stroking my hand with his forefinger and leaning towards me with his head down, at five minutes after ten, that is, you were still convulsing, half on the bed, half on the floor, when the housekeeper came in. They called me. He looks at his watch now. I came in at ten-ten and you were still in the condition they call stasis.

What happened next? Do I really want to hear it?

The ambulance came at ten-thirty. You were convulsing through around twelve. We rushed you in an ambulance over here. They decided it was best to sedate you. You were unconscious for a couple of days.

Did I almost die?

Almost.

That’s interesting.

Not to me, he says. If he isn’t strong, he wouldn’t be here. He could have taken off and I would never have known.

I think about all this for a minute, which is probably as long as I can hold onto it. Did I pass out? Is that what happened?

Not exactly.

Good. I’m sleepy.

Now I am awake. The world outside is light green. A visitor is here. I’m confused about what’s happened, but it seems best not to know. Tears come.

It’s all right. The man is very protective. I tell him I do know him. Just can’t place him exactly. He sounds like Richard Burton; that’s how I know the voice.

He hands me white roses. Those are nice, I say.

The flower of Yorkshire. He’s testing me. This is supposed to mean something. Can I make this connection? I’m your husband, he tells me. He lightly kisses me on the forehead, sits beside me and holds my hand.

Did we go through this before?

Yes, he says, we were at this spa—for our tenth wedding anniversary. He takes off his glasses and leans down to hold me. I love you.

Are the children scared? Did you tell them I’ll be home soon?

Now it’s another morning. I am up early. I’m walking with a soft-armed woman in the garden. It’s wonderful to be outdoors.

We walked by the rose garden yesterday.

Oh, good, I’ll have the surprise of seeing it all over again for the first time. And if we do something and I don’t remember, then I can’t miss it. It’s the stretching, half a shadow, something I almost remember, that’s a problem. Worse will be when it’s a memory of a time I shared with someone and I don’t have it, so in a way, they’ll miss it, too. Solitary memories aren’t as troubling. If you don’t have them, you don’t know.

My mind is still. I reach up to touch the branch of a tree. This looks like a tree I love at home, a perfect tree, a jacaranda tree. Our family is known for being able to memorize easily—but I can’t tell you your name. Today. Or his. I nod over in the direction of the visitor in white who’s standing by the door to the garden. And he’s my favorite doctor.

She laughs, That’s your husband.

Oh, really? I laugh. There’s a surprise for you. Does he know I don’t remember him?

He kisses me on the forehead. He’s immaculate in white jeans and shirt. He points out that he is my husband. He’s brought me five peaches.

We sit in the hospital cafeteria, looking out at the garden.

He brings over plates, a knife for cutting the peaches, and some tea.

We were at Champney’s, a health spa. You’d been swimming. You got out of the pool and someone found you in a seizure.

Do I hear impatience?

What kind of seizure? A heart attack? I’m too young for a heart attack.

No, he holds my hand gently and firmly, it seems to be epilepsy, but they’ll want to do more tests later.

Epilepsy. Julius Caesar had it. Where did I get that? Why do I think I know that?

Did you see it? I know it’s not attractive. When I was a kid, I had a friend, Carol Steinman, who had epilepsy. She was never allowed on overnights and went to very few birthday parties. Everyone said you wouldn’t want to see her have a fit, see her foam at the mouth, her eyes roll back, she’d wet her pants. At Will Rogers’s stables by the polo field at home in L.A., they shot horses who had fits. I didn’t know I had epilepsy.

I’m slicing a peach, carefully. It works better with my left hand. It’s as if this hand and I greet each other like old war buddies.

He’s watching my hands. It might be something no one wanted to tell you.

Maybe I forgot. Maybe the friend who had epilepsy was me.

He takes the knife from me.

Don’t worry, I say, I won’t kill myself over this.

He hands me a slice of one of the peaches. It’s pale. This is a wonderful taste.

I look at him. You’re seeing if I remember the flavor. I don’t. But right now it’s bright and soft, sweet and sharp, all at once, maybe more a fragrance than a taste.

I’m not testing you, he says.

Not really, I say.

You’re going home today. A woman rolls up the shade with a snap.

I try to picture what home might be, but that doesn’t stop the scene from unfolding. I walk up the dark driveway to my house. I open the door. The house is dark and still and empty. I walk through each room and not only is nothing here, I know I don’t even remember what was here. The kids are really gone. I can’t ask—even if I do find someone to ask—because you can’t say you don’t know where your kids are.

I don’t think I’m going, I say. I don’t want to go back. I live in this empty room with a book I’ve got to finish writing and a couple of snaps of my family. I can’t remember the book. But I take it for granted I do this—like I’m not surprised I walk or eat or have had these kids. But they are gone. I mustn’t let on that this bothers me. I pull on a long blue denim skirt. But I don’t want to go back, so I take off the skirt. I can dress later.

Don’t you remember home? She hands me the skirt. You’ll be wanting to put this on, luv. You’ll remember when you see it. She looks out the window. Is she trying to remember a home for me? Or for herself?

I don’t remember. But it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’m not sure how long. A few weeks, I guess. My mind has become a pool. I put a fact in, an idea; like an image, it dives under and may come up as something else, transformed. Or not come up at all.

A man walks in. He’s wearing a tight suit. Of course this is a doctor. Easy to see. They all look orderly. Except my father’s heart doctor, who had asthma from smoking but couldn’t stop. What do I need this for? Pieces of memory I do not need come through like dive-bombers dropping old flyers. I wave my arms at them, off, off. The doctor’s unsettled. It’s okay, I tell him, I remembered something I don’t need.

Yes. He clears his throat. That’s dealt with. How are you doing today, he says to the chart at the foot of the bed, still confused?

I’m kind of drowsy.

Well, you will be, he looks at my chart, you’re on phenytoin. You were in status epilepticus when you were brought in to Mandeville. You’re lucky to be alive. He has on a striped shirt and matching tie. He’s the kind of doctor who regards illness as a disciplinary problem and likes prescribing things you hate.

I spoke to my wife’s sister, the Englishman says to the doctor. I’ve forgotten the Englishman is in the room. He’s standing by the window. She doesn’t remember any mention of epilepsy and there aren’t any records in medical offices in L.A. Jill had two convulsions during her sleep that I told our London doctor about last year. And she was given phenobarbital every night as a child, which Dr. Earl thought indicated epilepsy.

L.A. doctors are largely interested in drugs, I explain to the Englishman. Mandeville…but I live in Mandeville Canyon. I can see Jane Fonda riding her horse down the road dappled by the trees. What kind of trees?

Mandeville is the name of the hospital, Jill.

Of course it is, I say. So when did they put a hospital on the polo field? This is too confusing to argue about, so I just say that I used to use speed, but haven’t had a drug or a drink for a long time.

Really? The doctor doesn’t sound convinced.

The Englishman presses my hand and says, She hasn’t, not since 1969. When I noticed she had the seizures at night, our doctor sent her to a neurologist, who recommended that she go on an anticonvulsant. But, he looks at me, she wouldn’t.

If that’s the stuff I’m on now, I’m sharp about this, I don’t want it! I can’t write on this—can’t hold onto what I’m thinking, which means no writing, can’t catch what I see. I feel drugged, handcuffed, struggling in an empty room, trying to fit a big jigsaw puzzle together.

I shouldn’t worry about the writing for now, my dear. You’ve been seriously ill, the doctor tells my husband, as if I’ve said nothing, but you might want to confirm the situation with a new EEG when you return to London.

But I want to go home.

The Englishman takes my hand. London, he says, is home.

I catch is home. I hear his resignation. Not frustration, exactly. He seems to accept difficulty. That may be useful. It’s not easy with a wife who doesn’t have a grasp of your name. I look him over. I catch his character. I don’t need to know where we are. Or where we’re going today. He’ll keep me safe.

CHAPTER 2

The dark red Jaguar has a steering wheel on the wrong side and a chauffeur, a notion that doesn’t startle me.

So, you have a Jaguar? The Englishman is pleased that I recognize the car. But I’m from L.A. We may forget the name and the face, but never the car. The car suits him. I might not have named it so quickly if it had been a midlist car.

Mark, the driver, a tall man with the awkward charm of a shy six-year-old, is uneasy. Should he say he notices I don’t know him or keep it to himself? He’s English. He keeps it to himself.

I’m sorry, I can’t remember you. But I know you, I say to him. I hug him lightly, he blushes, and we are all reasonably more comfortable. I take my husband’s hand (his name’s on the tip of my tongue) as we sit together in the back seat.

Mark’s a writer, my husband says, and he works as a chauffeur and gives us free rides.

Until I write the best-seller, Madam, Mark says, then we’ll all have drivers.

Then I’ll drive, I say. Not while I’m on this stuff. I can’t take that risk with the kids. Mark will help.

I can’t wait to see Johanna. And Jeremy. Yes. Are they scared? I’m standing on a cliff suddenly with a flooding river of fears stretching out below. You didn’t tell them I have—this?

This is epilepsy, Jill—not another word you don’t want to say. Johanna said she’s seen you in what she called ‘space-outs’ when you’ve been overtired, so she wasn’t surprised. And Jeremy wanted to get on a plane and rush over, but I told him that wasn’t necessary.

I hear the midnight phones hollow in the dark. I’d rush to New York (from where?) to see my mother, to be with my father. I see my father, his coat flying behind him like the nun in Madeleine, rushing to my grandmother.

Of course it is necessary. Jeremy shouldn’t take a plane by himself. How far away are we?

I can tell by the way the Englishman talks about the children that these aren’t his. This is another subject I’ll drop. I also do not remember his. At least I’ll see mine soon. I don’t want anyone to know the scope of this thing until I’ve worked it out.

I have frustration enough for both of us. What do we grasp by instinct in a given moment, and what do we understand by memory? And what’s the difference? He keeps his hand laid flat over mine as we’re driven. I look at his profile, the dark blue eyes, long blond lashes. I don’t remember how he became my husband, don’t know anything about him or much about myself.

This is not my freeway. I’ve got an instinct for freeways. We’re driving on another side. I’m not certain what other side, but it isn’t what I’m used to. I have a feeling I’m off target here and it will be best to keep quiet. The man I’m riding with has enough on his mind. And the driver seems to know where we’re going.

I feel a gathering chill, some nausea. I grab onto the door handle. The car swerves. It’s not the car—it’s me. I look at him. Maybe he can’t see it. It must not show. I’m falling off the world.

Are you all right? He’s scared.

No, I’m not. But I can’t talk. I’m gripped. I don’t like it. Want to get up out of it. I have a hunch, as my dad always said—about something—it’s going to clutch me deeper if I fight it. I settle in, see where it goes; my God, like a sixties thing. A spinout. No, I mean the other word where I’m across the other room of my head, like a dance floor on its side. If it’s an open tuna can and you’re small and in it while it’s spinning—and I’m off again the second I fall out, fall out, yes, that’s the word, it’s like fallout, say my mind blows up like a jigsaw, Dennis Hopper’s paintings, ammies like lemon tusks, Billy Al’s targets, atoms of images raining down. Out please, out-it’s the bomb that becomes a fighter plane, hitting, then eases off, rocking away, like a shaky real old plane. It’s weird, a kind of dizzy thing, but not exactly. Will the kids think I’m stoned? They have to know I wouldn’t.

We are not on the freeway now. We are in the city. I feel like I’ve been away for ages. What I really feel is, I’ve never been here.

You may feel like you’ve never been here. The Englishman reads my mind. Easy read right now. A primer. No. A burnt-out library, all bare, charred shelves.

No. It’s just a little strange. How many weeks was I in the hospital?

Only a few days, it just seems long, he says. Seems even longer to him.

This is Marylebone, he says. It’s like Greenwich Village might have looked a hundred years ago. Small restaurants, useful little shops, images from Dickens and Rex Harrison movies. It’s below Regent’s Park, he says. You love to walk over there by the water and watch the swans.

But I hate to walk. Never mind. He doesn’t need to know right now.

We take friends to Shakespeare’s plays here in the summer, he adds.

We also do that at the Hollywood Bowl, I say.

Probably, he says. Was that a scene from my life he was not in?—so, therefore, of little interest to him. This will be very depressing if everything I find to remember is before the Englishman came into my life. Nothing, and never forget this, existed before England got there and pulled it together.

There’s really no scenery here. It’s more like New York. I’m missing the mountains always on the edge of your eyes at home; to the left going up Sunset, to the right going down. Now we turn off and we’re in the Upper East Side—hospitals, medical offices.

This is Wimpole Street, he says.

I can see the sign, I say, and I’ve heard the name. I’m edgy and don’t know why. I know—Barrett and Browning. Tears. I’ve lost my memory, not my brains. But how much of what we call brains is really memory? Can I be smart without it? How long will it stay away? Is it all erased, or is it in there somewhere under a dense new filing system?

The chauffeur turns off Wimpole Street and parks the car. I know I can’t wait to see the kids, but my husband can. If he were really crazy about them, he’d have brought them to the airport. He picked me up from somewhere today. New York, probably. Or L.A. Does anyone go anywhere else?

We’re here. He’s watching me. Do I know the house? It’s large, red brick, two curved front bays with stone garlands, like a large-bosomed Victorian woman in a fancy bodice.

But it’s beautiful! I exclaim. Clustered on the steps under the arc of a eucalyptus tree are pots of bright flowers, like storybook flowers, and juniper bushes like we have by my grandmother’s grave at home. My father and I go there on her birthday and on Passover and Yom Kippur. After he says the prayers, he tells her what’s been happening lately, how the movie reviews have been, what pictures he loves, and he tells her a joke or two in Yiddish. Then he breaks off a sprig of juniper between his forefinger and thumb and smells it as if he’s catching her spirit. He puts the sprig in his pocket.

Before the Englishman has the key in the lock, a woman with thick, curly black hair and several earrings in her right ear springs out of the door and hugs me. She is plump, but very fast. When she greets me she has an easy Spanish accent, like L.A. Spanish. Maybe she came from California with me. I’m okay, I tell her. I’m not. I don’t want to go inside. She takes my suitcase from the driver. The Englishman’s looking at the mail on a table in an entrance hall with a marble floor.

This is our house, he explains. The basement flats and the waiting room and two offices on the ground floor are rented; one to Fickling, the dentist, and the other to a sex therapist.

A young woman with silver eagle hair, maybe thirty, is standing in the foyer; she’s not going to rush me. She’s cool, elfin—sharp blue eyes—tiny perfect hands. She kisses me. She searches my face. You don’t know me? Is that bad? Or is that good? she laughs, shrugs.

All I remember is I’m crazy about you—you’re not… This could be my sister, but the age doesn’t work, and she just isn’t. I’m really sorry.

She’s holding my hands. It’s fine. I can tell you all my stories over again. I’m Laurie Lipton and I live in one of the apartments downstairs. I’m the artist. Gavin, the architect, rents the other flat.

I wish the kids weren’t at school today. Tears are starting.

The Englishman stops at the foot of the red carpeted stairs. Jill, he puts one arm around me and one on the heavy, dark oak banister, your children aren’t here. Jeremy is thirty-four. I told you yesterday—and this morning. He’s married and has a new baby, Phoebe. Johanna is married and lives in Connecticut and has a son, Justin. You can call them tonight.

Why not now?

Jill, he says, it’s a different time zone.

Maybe I’ll wait until I’m better, so they won’t be uneasy. I hate when my mother isn’t clear.

As he opens the door, I expect only the tasteful simplicity of the entry—never, never the wild wonder of this busy old library of color, of books and things.

I’m standing in the dining room of this house and I am amazed: paper masks and pictures all over the walls, plates with movie stars’ pictures, antique toys perched on every surface, hedges of paper flowers tumbling down from the tops of bookcases, and swags of dark Liberty prints sweeping down over white lace curtains. It’s not empty at all. When Johanna was born Jeremy went in and painted the walls of her room red, like his room. She belonged to his world and that was his color. My father’s antique banks are everywhere—when did he give them to me? And the silver candlesticks. These are my parents’, I say softly—and these big brass candelabra—Cary Grant bought them from my Aunt Lillian’s shop. And the tall old art books, The Heritage Collection, children’s classics. My brother is just beginning to read. He’s the youngest. I reach up, "and these are my father’s books, Case History of a Movie is terrific." I look at my hand; this is my mother’s hand. This means my sister, Joy, and brother, Jeb, will be grown, too. This isn’t memory. This is reason, which works slower than memory, like an old train. I think for a moment. Now I wonder if that process, my thinking, is to be trusted at all. There on the wall is a painting my mother did of me holding Jeremy when he was a baby. I look at my hand again. I don’t want to look in a mirror. When I think too hard, I get dizzy. It’s not a simple feeling. It spins off through visions I instantly forget.

I’ve made some lunch, the Spanish woman with the curly black hair says.

Don’t you miss California? I ask her. It’s all I remember.

I’ve never been there, she says. She reminds me she is from Brazil. I am Lilia, you see. You will be wonderful, you will see. I have ripe papayas. Oh, these are so perfect for the memory. You will tell me things about myself I have never dreamed. That is how good it will be.

The cool, young, silver eagle woman stands beside me and touches my arm lightly. Do you know her? She’s looking at the large drawing of a serious, sharp-eyed woman. She looks like Alan Rickman, I say.

You haven’t forgotten movie star names, my friend says.

It’s only my life I seem to be missing.

Sketched around the edge of a portrait is a strip of film with images of a child, writing. I’m guessing the picture’s me, I say, which means I don’t know her.

The Englishman is watching me. This is Laurie, he puts his arm around her, "she’s the artist.

Reviews for Past Forgetting

[jeffrey_hatcher-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A must read for anyone who has sustained sudden amnesia from a prolonged seizure, trauma, and the like.

[drjane_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A tenderly-written and moving account of Jill Robinson's attempt to recreate her memory and her sense of self after suffering total amnesia.